Bonding
by Zayz
Summary: Due to a series of unfortunate events, House must watch Cuddy's baby Rachel for a half hour while she attends a meeting. A face-off of screaming infant and grouchy, soap-opera-deprived House ensues. R&R?


**A/N**: I wasn't going to post this...it was originally a little surprise for my friend Liz (XxIcexX), but then I decided I want to have another fandom to add to my list. Yeah, a pretty stupid reason, but there you go - that's why it's here. I'm just letting off some steam as I wait impatiently for the next episode.

My first ever House fic, so be kind when you review, if you could. Thanks!

--

**Bonding  
****By: Zayz**

--

"No, House – I'm _not _going to let you blindly operate on a man's failing heart because you think some magically test-eluding tumor is in there, and that's final."

Lisa Cuddy's tone was firm as she arranged a sheaf of papers littering her desk into an envelope. The expression on her face as she delivered her unfortunate verdict was also quite firm; to most, it actually bordered on formidable.

House, however, remained undaunted. He merely snorted.

"I won't be _blindly _operating on this man's failing heart," he explained. "There are going to be plenty of surgeons looking exactly where I tell them to; and they have wonderful eyesight."

He paused, considering. "Well, unless Chase is in the operating room. That dazzling blonde hair and _dreamy _accent have been known to cause accidents."

Cuddy sighed, rolling her eyes. She gathered up her papers and said, "Either way, you're not doing this. He won't survive the operation. I don't know if you bothered to drop by his room at all, but he's got five kids and a pregnant wife who would appreciate him alive –"

"So he can continue breeding his own soccer team? Yeah, okay, I understand the predicament," House snapped. "But this has to be done! It's the only way to really get to the problem. A tumor in the aortic valve explains everything."

"Yes, everything except why it hasn't shown up on any heart test you pulled out of your convoluted head," Cuddy pointed out, acidic.

"Tests can lie…" House murmured, deep in thought.

"Of course they do," Cuddy agreed absently, picking up a couple of other binders and crossing the office to the door, rather harassed. "No operation. Now, I've got a board meeting to take care of, so I need you to watch Rachel for me."

House wrinkled his nose. "Rachel?"

"Yes, my daughter." Cuddy turned back around to give him a very innocent look.

"What is your latest life-reconstruction plan doing here and why can't pediatrics take care of it?" House immediately demanded.

"Because they're at capacity and I need someone to take care of her for just half an hour while I do this meeting. Her nanny took a sick day at the last minute and I had to bring her to work." Cuddy's expression began to melt into one of slightly manic desperation. "Please? Wilson's bringing her up here, but he has patients today."

"In case our whole discussion on heart surgery suddenly ceased to exist, I have a patient too! One who's dying a whole lot faster than the idiot getting cozy on Wilson's couch!"

"Yes, but you have a qualified team to boss around – I'm sure they can handle things for a half hour while you're gone." Cuddy sighed again. "I'll cut your clinic hours – a week's worth," she offered resignedly.

"I'm not watching it and that's final," House decided gruffly, limping off to where Cuddy was standing at the door. His head bent down and his eyes averted to the floor, House did his best to make his escape, but was blocked off neatly by his boss. She wasn't going to give this up without a fight.

"I'll double your clinic hours unless you do this for me," she informed him.

House smirked. "You couldn't," he said, his irritating genius-of-the-world-shaming-the-mere-mortal grin beginning to play on his lips. "You have absolutely no leverage over me because you need me and you need me _now_." He took a moment to enjoy watching this fact sink in. "Punishments won't get that thing babysat and you know it."

Frustrated, Cuddy ran her hand through her hair, thinking fast. "What do you want, House?" she asked wearily. "I need to leave."

"Luckily for you, I need nothing more than your signature on a very special piece of paper and then we'll both be very happy," House announced, waving a form in her face cheerfully.

Groaning and throwing a filthy glower at the insufferable diagnostic genius in front of her, Cuddy snatched the form from him and scrawled her name on the appropriate line. House accepted the paper from her and grinned mischievously. Cuddy's free, non-binder-carrying hand went right to her waist.

"So can you watch Rachel now?" she asked, big blue-gray eyes locked in with House's.

House blinked, startled. "Watch Rachel?" He feigned surprise. "But, I have a patient who needs heart surgery; I have no time to spare! My team needs the okay to get this guy's life saved…"

Cuddy snatched the form right back. "I'll drop it off on my way there," she said almost challengingly.

House gave her a very blank, yet irritable stare. He knew the battle was over. "Do you really think I'm the best candidate for this job?" he asked in a last-ditch effort to get Cuddy to reconsider.

"No, but I don't really have a choice." Cuddy opened her door and took a step out. "I'll be praying the whole time I'm in there, but you're the only one who has limitless time to waste at this hospital – you're all I've got. Wilson will be up any minute."

And with this, Cuddy was out the door and scuttling down the all as fast as her heels could carry her. House exhaled heavily, making his way to sit on Cuddy's desk, mourning the situation he was in and generally feeling quite sorry for himself; when all of a sudden, Wilson arrived at Cuddy's office. He was looking haggard and held a baby carrier in his hand. Tormented gurgling could be heard from the tiny, pink-clad creature lying helplessly inside. House gave an almighty groan at the heinous sight.

"Why can't _you _just take her?" he complained when his friend approached him. "You look more like a mother anyway!"

"I'm sorry, House, but my world doesn't spin on an axis around your various needs," Wilson remarked dryly. "I have a consult today I can't reschedule."

"So tell him/her they have six months to live and let them play with _her _until it's time for Cuddy to take her back," House argued loudly, glaring with distaste at his best friend and the baby.

Wilson opened his mouth to contradict but Rachel chose this precise moment to start bawling her lungs out. Instinctively, House dropped his cane and covered his ears with both hands while Wilson had only the space to cringe.

"Good luck, House." Wilson blissfully allowed screaming Rachel's carrier to drop to the ground and he made a run for it.

Rachel and Gregory House were completely alone in Cuddy's office now – and Rachel was hollering loud enough to wake the dead.

House sighed, vexed, and stuffed two tissues from Cuddy's Kleenex box in his ears, pondering how best to pass the next half hour.

Something had to be done.

--

The reason House did not like children was very simple:

They refused to listen to him.

Adults, annoying and untrustworthy as they were, could at least be cleverly manipulated into acquiescence. Children, however, did no such thing; and when they were young (like Rachel), they couldn't even talk properly. All they did was scream and give him a wicked headache.

House decided to take Rachel with him to one of his favorite hang-outs, coma guy's room. Rachel continued to scream to her heart's content, and House dutifully added a few more tissues to his ears, but he still got plenty of strange looks from passersby.

One woman went as far as to ask House if he was kidnapping Rachel – to which he derisively snorted and answered, "Out of all the cool people I could steal in this hospital, do you really think I'd settle for this blob of very loud flesh?"

The woman had had no response to this.

Once in coma guy's room, House collapsed into a chair and put his legs up, turning on the TV so to catch his favorite three o'clock soap. However, he was quickly met with a sizeable dilemma – he could not properly slack off and enjoy the beauty of modern television if Cuddy's stupid baby kept howling at him. Ignoring her wouldn't work if he needed silence.

Cussing foully under his breath, he turned his exasperated glance on Rachel, who had now started to sob, adding hiccups to her orchestration of noise. She stared back at him with enormous, shiny brown eyes and squirmed restlessly in her carrier. House wondered off-handedly if Cuddy would mind him employing the use of a sedative on her precious bundle of so-called joy. The needle was right there…

As he was seriously going over the dosage necessary for an infant in his head and preparing to grab the syringe, the door of coma guy's room opened up abruptly, revealing a highly irate blonde clad in an ER uniform. Allison Cameron had arrived on the scene.

"House, what are you doing in here?" she demanded. "I'm getting all sorts of noise complaints and –"

Her eyes fell to Rachel and the open drawer of syringes, as well as the caught expression on her ex-boss's face. She couldn't be more befuddled if she tried.

"Who is that and what were you going to do to her?" Cameron asked, looking remarkably like Cuddy as well with her hands planted on her small hips. House gave her a grave look.

"Yes, I've had a baby," he said. "Shhh – don't tell Wilson, but he has to pay child support."

Cameron continued to look at him with that same I-need-to-know-how-badly-to-bust-you expression on her face, so House simply muttered something about humorless people and began loading his weapon with fluid.

"Fine. She's Cuddy's – and I wasn't going to do anything lethal to her," he defended himself. "I was just going to…ease her obvious pain a little."

Cameron marched over right away and confiscated the needle from him with the air of a kindergarten teacher righting the wrongs of a very feisty six-year-old. She stared up at his would-be harmless expression with a half-smug, half-scandalized expression of her own.

"You are _not _giving Cuddy's baby any kind of sedative," she ordered him.

"Aww, but why, Mommy? She won't shut up!" House whined sardonically. "It hasn't stopped that infernal crying since Wilson dumped it with me."

"Believe it or not, there are other, non-chemically-induced ways of soothing a baby," Cameron said, walking over to where Rachel lay. "Do you know her name?"

"No, and nor do I care what it is," House griped, wrinkling his nose at the sight of Cameron lifting Rachel out of her carrier. "You're disturbingly gentle to all that hinders the rest of mankind – can't _you _take it? Cuddy will be done with her meeting in twenty-five minutes."

"Sorry, I've got to get back to the ER now, but I know you can do this, House." Cameron's sweet smile at the baby, who was still crying despite being cuddled and bounced in Cameron's arms, melted into a smirk at House. "Just…pretend like you give a crap about her. She's probably been in this carrier all day – why don't you hold her and let her play with your cane or something while you watch TV?"

House grabbed his cane from beside the counter and held it possessively against his chest, scandalized the young woman would ever suggest such an odious solution.

"Never," House announced.

Cameron rolled her eyes, but gave the sobbing baby a kiss on the forehead before holding her out to House. "Here," she said. "Take her. I have to go."

Groaning like a wounded zebra, House grudgingly accepted Rachel and held her out in front of him as though she were poisonous. At once, her crying stopped and she only hiccupped, squirming slightly in midair. House made a terrible face while Cameron began to beam.

"You see? She just wanted to be held," Cameron cooed mostly at the child, lovingly stroking her cheek and saving the impish grin for her unfortunate babysitter.

"Ridiculous…" House gingerly took the infant to her carrier and plopped her back in.

She barely touched the seat before she broke out into a wail again, somehow louder than before this time. Cameron had to work quite hard to stifle her giggles.

At the moment, House wasn't sure which female he most wanted to give the sedative to.

"Well, now you know how to get your job done, House." Cameron's eyes twinkled as she turned to leave. "I'll see you later."

And with that she was gone.

House sighed heavily, detesting the world and everyone in it with even more might than usual. Rachel continued to weep, her tiny arms flailing futilely against her plastic trappings.

How could anyone voluntarily stand such loud, strange creatures in their lives?

_He _would surely never know.

--

Roughly twenty minutes later, coma guy's door opened once more; and this time, it was Cuddy, hysterically barricading her way inside.

"House! Cameron told me you'd be in here with –" And here she trailed off, because the scene in front of her was one of extreme peculiarity.

There, in the room of a man in a coma, sat Gregory House, the most anti-social diagnostician of all time, holding baby Rachel in his lap while focusing on his favorite afternoon soap opera. The child was perfectly content, gnawing on House's fingers with her empty gums, and House was thoroughly immersed in the television. Cuddy had to blink several times to confirm this was indeed real and not just a hallucination.

"House, are you bonding with my baby?" Cuddy's tone was one of sheer incredulity and disbelief.

House turned his head to look innocently at his baffled boss.

"Cameron wouldn't let me use a sedative," he said by way of vague explanation. He then gathered up Rachel and her various blankets and thrust her at Cuddy, attention already drifting back to the TV.

"Here. For you. Enjoy," he finished.

Cuddy, still in a state of shock, picked up Rachel and decided it was just better not to say anything and ruin the moment.

"T-Thank you, House," she stammered.

"Bye." House had already checked out for the day.

Cuddy turned on her heel, picked up the baby carrier, and left the hospital bedroom, wondering how in the world this phenomenon could possibly occur.

Rachel whimpered ever so slightly on their way out.

-FIN-


End file.
